Update: All the details on Samsung’s problem with Vel Hogan. Docs and jury records here.
Velvin “Vel” Hogan, the Silicon Valley electrical engineer and one-time inventor who served as foreman of the jury in the Apple vs Samsung patent infringement case, sure is getting his 15 minutes of fame — plus some.
He’s no stranger to the patent scene. Hogan filed in 2002 for a patent application relating to video tech and got it — it is U.S. Patent No. 7,352,953. He later let it lapse. Interestingly, he lists InTeleMax as a previous employer — as a public company with the stock listing INTC. That’s Intel. But if you search InTeleMax in corporate records it lists its address as the same as Hogan’s San Jose, Calif. home.
Hogan is all over the news. The self-described CTO says he is convinced Samsung overstepped, and that the evidence against Samsung was “overwhelming.” He is not, incidentally, the only tech worker that served on the jury. Another is presently a senior product manager at AT&T, which of course serves both Apple and Samsung with connectivity. That would be one Peter Catherwood.
Does it strike anyone it is strange that an AT&T employee and a patent-holding engineer who identifies on LinkedIn as Intel would be on this jury?
The jury awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages as a result of Samsung’s so-called “copying” of Apple iPhone and Apple iPad designs for its own products.
That’s half what Apple asked for, but it’s still significant.
So who is the San Jose, Calif. engineer calling himself Vel Hogan? Well, we know he’s gotten his hands dirty with patents before. He bought this patent from another inventor and filed one of his own in 2002 with the USPTO that he later let lapse. Check this out.
More details below the fold.
Here’s his bio as Multicast lists it.
Vel Hogan
Vice President of Engineering
Vel received his Engineering education from the San Jose State University in 1977. Since then he has refined his expertise at Memorex, Storage Tech, DEC, Micropolis and Quantum. He has over 30 years of experience in recording technology.
Vel became interested in refining and defining video compression while developing new performance characteristics for Digital Video Recording on a hard drive.
It must be way past Gina Smith’s bedtime, because she sounds more robotic than Mitt Romney. Go to bed Gina!